


Giving Thanks

by agoodwoman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 20:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12849270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman





	Giving Thanks

Time passes in moments. As she got older and faced certain death over and over again, Dana Scully tried to hold on to those moments. With a fleeting breath, she felt it slipping through her fingers at each ticking of the clock. Life was fleeting, time was moving more quickly than she could catch up to and she needed it all to slow down before she found herself laying in a hospital bed, asking for her estranged son to call.

As she aged through her thirties, she came to realize that even though their situation felt strained at his passing, the way she and Ahab related to one another as an adult child and parent could never be different from what it was. His stubbornness and expectations clashed with what her drive and dreams directed her towards from medicine into the FBI. Unexpectedly, Dana and her mother had been able to form a friendship and develop a camaraderie that wasn’t as easy as it was for Melissa and Maggie.

Due to that development, the loss of her mother was more acute than when father died twenty years before. A piece of Dana was now missing and she didn’t know how to repair that or just live with a hole in her heart that her mother, sister, father and son could fill. Maggie was the last parental figure Dana had left. A feeling of emptiness consumed her waking thoughts as she adjusted to a life without her mother.

Maybe it was harder because it was the holidays. Her oldest brother Bill, his wife and their children would remain on the West Coast this holiday season with promises to appear in her neck of the woods by the New Year. Charlie, even after his mother’s passing, would not agree to visiting over Thanksgiving or Christmas. His pain and frustration with their family falling out needed to be transferred onto someone and he picked Dana because their mother and oldest sister Melissa weren’t around to blame.

The Scully family had not progressed into the happy picture that Maggie and Bill Sr. had envisioned for themselves when they had their four beautiful children. Before the messiness, before the frustrations and yelling, the name calling and the slamming doors, there were memories that made her fond of the holiday and tradition.

One of the earliest recollections of Thanksgiving she could remember was at a house in Okinawa with a warm breeze coming in through an open window and her mother cooking a turkey that Ahab had flown in especially for their family. Maggie’s sun-kissed skin from the warm November sun had contrasted so greatly against her fair children, who took after their father. There were not many redheads at the U.S. Naval Base or around the Ikego Housing facility. At age four, it was the first time Dana had felt aware of her appearance but she learned later it was an awareness other children didn’t normally develop until they were five or six.

It was a clear memory of running inside the base housing where Maggie was stirring the gravy and she wiped dirt from Dana’s face with her apron, kissing her reddened nose from the warm November air. The oven timer dinged and Maggie pulled out fresh baked biscuits from the newest model available from Frigidaire.

Traditional American and European ovens were not common household appliances in Japan but Ahab had it brought in for his wife. A huge gesture to assuage the guilt he had for moving them again for his career. The appliance had assisted in filling the house with many familiar smells such as freshly baked bread and spiced roast beef that made the change a little easier.

“Should we try one, Dana?” her mother suggested and the young girl nodded with enthusiasm.

It was a different feeling, as a child, to feel a hunger in her belly suddenly and with ferocity when the smell of bread was wafting through the house. Somehow no matter where they were in the world, freshly baked bread or the smell of spices in a stew would remind Dana she had a place there.

The young girl watched as her mother split one in two, buttered and shared it with her.

“Good,” the toddler noted as though she was a connoisseur of pastries and breads.

Maggie kissed Dana on her nose and gave her daughter a secretive wink before telling her to round up her siblings to wash up for dinner. Being one of four children, she never found herself getting lost in any shuffle. Maggie Scully was good for that.

 

  
***** *****

 

  
The early 1970s in Annapolis felt much colder compared to Japan and by the time Dana was seven, the Scully family had returned stateside. The East Coast didn’t have warm Novembers or sushi on the school lunch program. Most holiday dinners, Ahab would call or try to be present but there was a lot of shuffle going on in those years. The Navy didn’t leave officers in the same location for longer than a few years and friendships became fleeting.

Life felt more complicated, even at that young age. Perhaps it was the way the free love movement was so disapproved of by the painfully Catholic parents Dana lived with. Perhaps it was war in Vietnam being such a hot button topic with everyone and anyone who learned her father was in military service. A primary school child didn’t have any say in what jobs the military took on.

Grandparents, aunts and uncles flew in from all over the country to see the recently stateside Scully’s. Dana felt like an item on display at a store rather than a child as her Great Aunt Olive held the chin of the six year old.

“She’s smart,” Olive declared to a room full of relatives that Dana didn’t know. “She’ll do something challenging in life, I can see it in her eyes.”

“Aunt Olive-” Ahab began to interject.

He didn’t believe in such superstitions but stopped himself at Maggie’s behest. Dana later found out from her mother that Olive had yet to be wrong when she looked into a child’s eyes. She predicted allergies, marriages, deaths and careers.

“I see… so much,” Olive continued hesitantly. She looked up suddenly at Ahab. “She’s going to save the world.”

Nervous laughter filled the room at the thought the future would possibly be saved by the small, precocious child with fiery red hair standing amongst them. Dana blushed furiously and took her great aunt’s hand into hers. The declaration didn’t go to her head in the slightest but she was smart enough not to argue this either.

“You think so?” Dana asked, almost hoping it were true.

“Sit next to me at dinner and I can give you some clues,” Olive replied conspiratorially.

Olive would become one of Dana’s favourite aunts but not because she had her first taste of wine from Olive’s glass that night.

 

  
***** *****

 

By the time the Scully family moved to San Diego, there were teenagers in the house. Bill was be graduating from high school in the fall and furiously studying for his admission to Annapolis. Ever the ambitious one, the eldest child had chosen a career path at age eleven and stuck with it through his school years. Melissa, at fifteen, switched back and forth between what she felt was right for her with each career planning activity required at school. Dana, at thirteen, wanted a job that helped people and her analytical mind appreciated the hard facts science provided. The twelve-year-old Charlie was less likely to serve his country but knew he liked to argue so his family teased him he would probably make an excellent lawyer.

Very quickly, San Diego felt monumentally less safe than Japan. Not only was there more crime in the news on a daily basis but an event touched her deeply. Jacob Emry, Dana’s favourite Sunday school teacher, had been shot in front of his house and she would no longer have the comfort of being called Scout upon arrival to mass. What Dana learned, as she was listening to the radio on her front porch with her sister and reading through her assigned homework, was that evil could touch her life. Before that day, nothing bad seemed to linger around her. She could accept that pets died, great grandparents passed on and plants didn’t always survive a temperamental caretaker but people she felt close to were supposed to be permanent.

“I’m so sorry, Dana,” Melissa said emphatically in the way that she could take a moment and make it about her. She pressed her forehead into her sisters and hugged her tightly. “What can we do?”

Dana looked at her siblings and noted they were waiting for a reaction of outrage but all she could do was allow the tears to fall. She asked the senior reverend at church why such injustice was allowed and the answer he gave Dana at thirteen would be one of many reasons she would eventually choose a life in the FBI over medicine.

“Scout, people can make a real difference in this world for good or bad,” the priest told her using the nickname that sounded foreign on any other tongue but their murdered friend. “You can choose to make a difference in so many ways. Your good heart shows us all how to be. As adults, we can pick careers and jobs that affect the world for the better. If you want to make a difference, you need to be a conduit to positive change.”

“Father, I want to help people,” Dana said in the quiet of confession.

“My child, change can be with medicine or bringing those to justice who hurt those in need,” the priest explained quietly. “Mr. Emry believed in you. And so do I.”

Jacob Emry was a welcomed presence in her life. She was going through a rebellious stage and his guidance was never one of judging or disappointment. She could confess smoking her mother’s cigarettes and he would shake his head at her but never in judgement.

It hurt too much to think about the loss of someone she let in and after that, it took a lot to let anyone else reach her that way. She built a wall around her heart and tried to close herself off from getting too close to people that could very well leave her life with a horrible misdeed.

She understood how she became the person she was but her life now wasn’t one she would have pictured for herself ten or twenty years ago. Chosen loneliness had consumed her too often and began earlier than she could care to admit.

The transition from feeling open as a child to being more wary of any kind of love was helpful in her teen years. When Dana had reached her senior year of high school, she met Marcus Fitch. Marcus had spent the last seven months attempting to get past second base. There were two sides to Dana. The side who liked to rebel yearned for more than making out and heavy petting. The dutiful side of Dana that wanted to look her mother in the eye and couldn’t bring herself to go all the way. When she finally brought herself to admitting she might lose her virginity, a firetruck arrived just in time to save her chastity and virtue. She and Marcus made good on plans three weeks later in the backseat of his Dodge Challenger. It wasn’t special or fulfilling in the ways that Melissa promised a first time might be. At the same time, her curiosity about what all the fuss was about suddenly was assuaged and she ended things with Marcus before she left for UMD.

  
***** *****

  
During her senior year of university, Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t as exciting as much as the time of year was stressful. University was a great environment for her and she felt like she wasn’t trying to prove herself as more than Melissa Scully’s nerdier sister. Her success was measured by her peers with her grades and approval from her professors. If only her father didn’t try to ask her to pick a field of medicine before she had even been accepted to medical school. So far, her university was quite pleased with everything she did, however, that wasn’t enough for Ahab.

“Dana, we’re just asking you what branch of medicine you’ll want to study in,” Maggie plied gently as her daughter stood at the kitchen sink washing the gravy boat. “It’s up to you but we want you to choose.”

Dana set the gravy boat back into the hot soapy water and turned to her mother. “I don’t know yet. I think when I go through my rotations that I’ll have an idea. I was thinking cardiology or pathology.”

“We were hoping surgery,” Ahab admitted from across the kitchen.

Dana wiped her hands on the tea towel next to the sink. “Wouldn’t it be better to go into things with an open mind?”

“You rewrote Einstein, Starbuck!” her father practically bellowed. “Stop floating through this decision like your sister and pick one!”

“Dad!” Melissa declared her presence from the entrance to the kitchen.

Ahab didn’t show regret. “Melissa-”

“Don’t make this about me just because you guys are trying to overachieve with Dana,” Melissa snapped and left the entrance to the kitchen in a huff.

Dana followed her sister to the hallway. For Melissa, the comparisons at her lack of academic achievements stung just as much as it hurt Dana to hear from others she wasn’t as physically developed as her older sister. She longed for a place in society where her appearance didn’t count toward her worth.

“Bill,” Maggie could be heard saying quietly and the young woman stopped outside the kitchen door. “Dana will not settle on a career. She’s ambitious, stubborn and driven. She’s got so much of you in her.”

“She’s the smartest person in this family, Maggie,” Ahab admitted. “I just want her to utilize it.”

Melissa and Dana exchanged a look in the hallway as they listened to their parents’ exchange. This was the kind of eavesdropping they always regretted as they heard more honest opinions that they weren’t always prepared for. It never stopped them from doing it. Melissa shook her head as she reached her tolerance level of disapproval but Dana stayed.

“Of all the kids I thought you were going to pick a fight with this year, I’m surprised it’s Dana,” Maggie laughed.

Ahab chuckled. “I had to give the wild ones a break. There’s always Christmas.”

“Oh right, Christmas,” Maggie sighed.

Dana left the hallway and found her sister in their old bedroom with an old doll that Dana had dressed in a white coat and green pants before she left for college in August.

“It’s supposed to be a doctor doll,” Dana said as she sat down on the twin bed across from her sister.

“Maybe I’ll get you one of those American Girl dolls that just came out as your Christmas present. I think they make doctors,” Melissa offered as she thumbed at the button eyes they sewed on when the painted ones fell off. “How did you know you would be a doctor?”

“I suppose when I opened a frog in science class and I didn’t throw up like the other girls,” Dana mused and Melissa gave her a look. “No really. Anatomy never bothered me. And I chose physics because it has math, which always tells you the truth and never lies-”

“That’s about a guy,” Melissa interrupted knowingly.

“Not everything is about a guy,” Dana argued.

“Okay but that is about a guy,” she said as she handed Dana the doll.

Dana nodded. “I don’t really have time for dating-”

Melissa laid back on the bed and sighed. “There’s always time for dating, Dana.”

Those kind of discussions were what broke down the barriers between the sisters. They could talk about things outside of career paths and school and just be two young women who were trying to figure their lives out. It wasn’t until after Melissa died that she realized how much of that kind of camaraderie was missing from her life.

 

  
***** *****

 

When she began her medical rotation, she avoided Thanksgiving at home to spend it working with Daniel. She countered that she would be home for Christmas and at the time, she wasn’t in a relationship with him, yet. It began that Thanksgiving evening as she worked on chart notes in the staff lounge with a cup of tea cooling next to the stack she had completed.

Daniel came into the empty lounge with his own cup of coffee and a plastic container of vegetables and dip. Since Dana started under his medical program, she had noted a change in his appearance. He lost about fifteen pounds and began running the Campus Loop around the same time she had. She liked how he talked to her, not as a student or an intern, but he made her feel like an equal. He was one of the first authoritative men in her life that truly listened to what she wanted as she tried to decide between specialities.

“Dana, I was wondering where you got off to. Thanksgiving vegetable plate?” he offered as he sat down adjacent to her.

Dana looked up from her notes to the wisps of grey at his hairline. He hadn’t shaved since yesterday and she noted more grey around his chin than the last time he took a few days off from the razor. “Did the cafeteria run out of turkey shaped vegetables?”

Daniel procured one cauliflower that had been shaped slightly like a wild turkey. “You can have the last one.”

“I’m almost done with your charts,” she said as she twirled white vegetable between her thumb and forefinger. “You can grab a few hours until the next call.”

Daniel put one hand on her elbow and ran his forefinger up the inside of her arm. It made her cheeks flush and she looked into his shining blue eyes. He had made gestures in the past that could be misconstrued as more than friendship but he had never done anything overt in a way that made her uncomfortable. This didn’t bother her either.

“I might do that,” he said as he retracted his hand. “Did you think any more about coming to the conference with me to present our research paper?”

“Next month?” she clarified. “I did. I think I might…I’m worried how it looks.”

Daniel sat back against the chair and crossed his arms. “You should have the chance to see what one of these conferences are like. You’ll have the chance to talk to the top doctors in every field. You can see us all being pompous and tooting our own horns, get inappropriately drunk and behave like med students.”

She knew he was married but he suggested on more than one occasion they weren’t happy. She was aware he had a daughter about her age but that didn’t quite bother her. He was nice, good-looking, and the flirtations had only been harmless, so far.

“You want me around for that?” Dana asked with a smile.

“I guess I just wanted an excuse to kiss you under the mistletoe,” he said with a laugh. He caught her expression. “All in the name of Christmas cheer.”

“I never thought you needed an excuse for anything, Daniel,” Dana chided.

He leaned across the table and slid his hand into her hair. He kissed her long and slowly as a man with confidence and purpose. It began two years of something, in hindsight, she wished she hadn’t started. However that night, she tucked herself into an on-call room with the door locked. They didn’t sleep together that night but she let herself get taken over by waves of pleasure at the skilled hands of Daniel Waterston.

At the time, it didn’t seem wrong. It felt new and exciting and part of her liked that he wasn’t completely hers. Her heart let him in just enough to imagine a future in medicine with him. Until Melissa said to her quite plainly at her birthday that if he would cheat on a vow, he could cheat on another one. Dana was so certain that he wouldn’t until she saw him having coffee with another intern. As innocent as the meeting was, she knew she couldn’t live her life with a man she only half trusted.

After that, Dana pulled away the closer graduation became. Eventually, she learned what she was told by Daniel with earnest promises was wildly different from the family therapy sessions Mrs. Linda Waterston forced on them in April of 1990. When Dana left Stanford, she had her medical degree, a recruitment letter for the FBI and a reputation among Maggie Waterston’s group of friends for being a homewrecker.

If only Maggie Waterston knew that Dana Scully wasn’t the first med student the esteemed doctor had seduced under his tutelage. When Dana learned that fact, she felt less special and more the fool. It didn’t change that she left the West coast with her tail between her legs and right into the metaphorical arms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s recruitment.

The FBI would be a place she could distinguish herself apart from a man and his desires. She could serve the American people and hopefully get some of herself back.

  
***** *****

  
The first time she hosted a Thanksgiving supper at her house, it was three weeks after she had broken up with Ethan and the last time she would see her father. He watched football while she and her mother cooked the turkey. Dana attempted the baked biscuits that her mother made in Okinawa and Maggie winked at her when they came out of the oven with a nice bronze glow.

After five hours together, they had discussed Charlie’s new job with Wagenmaker and Oberly in Chicago, Bill’s promotion to Commander and Melissa’s pottery. It wasn’t until they were leaving with half the dishes not done that Ahab announced their immediate need for departure.

“How’s work?” he asked her as though it was a secretarial job.

“Work is good,” she replied.

Ahab’s strict sensibilities wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to process The Jersey Devil or homicidal clone girls who poisoned every parental figure around them. He would tell her to quit her nonsense with the gun and badge and serve in the naval hospitals if she wanted to do some good.

Her father wanted the best for her but his firm hand and stubborn nature wasn’t the type to guide a young person into the path they wanted. He was a captain and a strict one at that. If he suggested something, it wasn’t with the intent you consider it as anything but an order. He still saw her admission to the FBI to be one of rebellion and when he passed, she had to resign herself that no matter what she did in her life, he would be proud of her.

They gave each other a salute and she hugged her mother but he kept his distance. She wondered how long it would be before Dana forgot the smell of Ahab’s cologne or the way his aftershave mixed with his the tobacco pipe he smoked on special occasions.

Men like Ahab didn’t believe in regular vices and she thought about the man she worked with who had many. He had asked for sunflower seeds when she came to visit him after Lucas Henry almost cost him his life. He held her arm and rubbed her bicep reassuringly in the way that friends do. Her life was a lot less complicated then.

She sat on the edge of Mulder’s hospital bed as the monitor kept track of his beating heart. If only she’d had a chance to hear her father’s one last time, she could feel less guilty about not being a doctor that could have saved him. It wasn’t what she wanted anymore but it could have changed the path of his life. It was a naive thought but that’s where guilt came from, innocence and the knowledge to do better.

  
***** *****

  
For their first Thanksgiving after they went on the run, Mulder bought them turkey sandwiches from a deli with cranberry mayo and french fries on the side. He told her he was thankful she still believed in him, even after all that was proven to her that she shouldn’t. She had spent the last nine years knowing a man who told her to believe in everything he heard and saw but when it came to himself, he couldn’t bring her to ask for that kind of faith.

“It’s almost like a home cooked dinner,” Mulder reviewed the sourdough toasted bread. He took a healthy bite and nodded as he chewed.

Scully reached out and wiped a stray dollop of mayonnaise from the edge of his mouth with her paper napkin. She took a tentative bite of the sandwich and her eyebrows rose in her own appreciation. “Almost.”

“They had turkey gravy for the fries,” Mulder said as he reached into the bag and set the styrofoam container on the table between them.

He opened the lid and took three french fries through the light brown condiment. He held the greasy food up and Scully arched one eyebrow. She was not usually a gravy person and Mulder knew this but prior to helping Mulder escape from an army prison, Scully had been an agent of the FBI, sworn to uphold the law.

She leaned slightly towards his hand and took a bite of the dipped fries. The gravy was spiced with sage, thyme, rosemary and fresh ground salt and pepper. It was surprisingly good for a fourteen dollar lunch.

Mulder took the same fries and doubled dipped them into the gravy before trying it also. This was something they did before they became lovers. Shared bites of food, drank from the same water bottle or coffee. It started out of necessity when food or water was scarce in the woods, the arctic or by the side of a highway as they waited on a tow truck. It continued on when they were in civilization at airports, on stakeouts or at either of their homes. No wonder so many people thought they were sleeping together before they were. They had the habits and familiarity of lovers since the beginning but without the reward of a mind-blowing orgasm.

Sitting in that diner with Mulder’s feet on either side of hers and a grin on his face, she realized that even though they were on the run from the law, at least they had each other.

“French fry for your thoughts?” Mulder asked as he held up another one coated in gravy.

Scully took the fry from him and took a bite. “I was thinking about what I was thankful for.”

“Is there much you can be in a place like this with a fugitive?” he countered. It was a self-deprecating comment, she knew that.

“Haven’t you ever talked about what you’re thankful for?” she asked him.

“Sure,” he replied. “Although for a while all I could be thankful for was my adult video collection.”

She shook her head. “You can’t name one thing?”

He nodded. “Sure. I have you.”

He said it so simply as though it was obvious and easy. It broke her heart a little as she thought about how they could have had more. They could have had William too.

“Mulder-”

“We aren’t always going to be lost parents to him, Scully,” he said as though he was peeking into her thoughts. “Maybe in a few years, we’ll get him back.”

“Maybe.” She nodded. “Each other is enough.”

Mulder looked at her contemplatively. “I’d like for it to be more than enough.”

She took his hand and he squeezed her fingers. “Enough is good for now.”

 

***** *****

 

The timer rang on the oven and Dana Scully crossed her apartment to open the door and baste the bird one more time before the final hour. The outside skin was golden brown. Sage, thyme, rosemary and paprika had spiced the exterior and interior of the reasonable-sized bird nicely. She had stuffed the inside with onions, carrots, celery and butter to add richness to the flavouring. In an hour, when the bird would rest before she carved it up, she planned to use the drippings for the gravy.

She set another hour on the oven, poured herself the first glass of wine for the night and wandered her empty apartment that was the most quiet she had ever experienced.

Past holidays with Mulder always included music or the television taking up the main floor of their ordinary house. Occasionally he’d swoop into the kitchen with a kiss for her, steal some bread before she put it in the stuffing mix or to get another beer. Mulder wasn’t useless in the kitchen. He could cut vegetables and follow direction but he got too distracted by wanting to kiss her a lot when she started explaining what she was doing as she was doing it. Not this year.  
  
A photo of Mulder tucked behind a vase of pink and white hydrangeas caught her eye as she passed by the fireplace and adjusted the silver frame on the mantel. Fox Mulder was a man who didn’t believe in boundaries, rules or personal bubbles. He broke down the walls she put around her heart, brick by brick with his tenacity and passion. Every time she needed space from his overwhelming presence in her life, she longed for him once he was gone. Her apartment was quiet and open to as much breathing room as anyone could need. With only one name on the lease, her solitary existence had more space and air than she could handle.

She hugged herself as she moved back towards her kitchen to get a refill of wine. The turkey inside was cooking nicely, her potatoes were ready to be put on and she had some side dishes that wouldn’t take long. It was a lot of fuss but not doing something for the holiday was more depressing than making too much food and donating half of it to the hospital staff kitchen.

As she turned on the stovetop to boil the potatoes, there was a sound at the front door.

Scully, with her wine in hand, stood at the doorway of her kitchen and watched as Mulder entered her apartment using the key he had given her for emergencies.

This wasn’t an emergency. It was a holiday and nothing in their past conversations had insinuated that he was going to be stopping by.

“Gobble gobble,” he announced as he spotted her down the entryway and she could tell she was looking at him with a dumbfounded expression she couldn’t shake.

“Is that how you announce yourself?” she asked eventually.

“Okay,” he smirked. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” she asked as he set his bag on the floor near the closet and approached slowly.

“Fox,” he prompted.

He took two steps closer to her and she leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. She was on the edge of the living room and kitchen, ready to go either way. It could be a metaphor for their limbo relationship status but that was saying a lot for where her feet were planted on the plush white carpet of her D.C. highrise apartment.

“Fox who?” she asked. His first name was rarely used in moments of jest but not entirely foreign to her tongue.

“Fox got in the henhouse,” he started as he fought a smile. “Where’s the bird?”

Scully shook her head as she held back a laugh. “That’s the worst one you’ve ever done.”

“Even worse than when I said, ‘Me Fox, you Dana,’ and I used that brown hand towel as a loin cloth?” he asked with a grin.

The memory of Mulder as Tarzan before he shaved his beard and prior to a much-needed haircut had been burned on her brain. She was sitting at the dining room table going over charts she brought home from Our Lady of Sorrows. It made her laugh during a time when most of her cases made her cry. The gesture to make a fool of himself did not go unappreciated. Mulder peeled the starched button up shirt off her body and helped her forget while he pretended to be slightly primitive with his hands and mouth.

“Those towels served a better purpose as your makeshift loincloth,” she mused and took a sip of her wine.

Mulder took the glass from her and took a sip of the drink from the same place her mouth had been. Even with their relationship in limbo, he didn’t care to avoid her saliva.

“Nice choice,” Mulder noted and took another sip. “Fruity.”

Scully took the glass back from him and had another taste. The flavour of their mouths would be the same but she tried not to focus on that too long.

“So, is there enough for two?” he asked as he glanced into the kitchen.

Scully looked towards the pot of potatoes that would feed at least ten people. “Perhaps.”

Mulder unzipped his leather jacket and put his hands in his pockets as he looked around her apartment. “Need any help?”

“Maybe with the dishes later,” she replied and frowned comically. She shook her head and smiled a little. “Thanks for coming over…”

“I know I wasn’t invited but I figured after everything with your family and your mom-”

Scully cut him off by standing on her toes and placing a kiss next to his mouth. “You figured right.”

Mulder’s hands were on her waist now and he looked back at her with his wild green eyes that showed he wanted more than just a friendly kiss hello. “How much time before the turkey is ready?”

“The potatoes need my attention in twenty minutes,” she said quietly.

Mulder kissed her softly and pulled her into an embrace. “I could help you lose nine of those minutes if you wanted.”

She nodded into his chest. It might not be the healthiest option for them with their relationship so up in the air but it would help assuage the pain and loss she was feeling at the time.

He kissed her properly and completely with promise and hope. It was exactly what she needed. Although one member of their family was painfully absent, they had the renewed desire to find their son. She had hope that this time next year they could at least have seen his face. Somehow an embrace from Mulder gave her faith in the future and that was something to be thankful for.

 


End file.
